Foreign national prisoners and the maintenance of family ties in Irish prisons

Abstract

This article examines the importance of familial relationships in the lives of 82 Foreign National Prisoners (FNPs) in Irish Prisons. This article begins by outlining the methodology of the qualitative study. It then develops two key findings that emerged from the prisoner interviews. First, the article shows that the preservation of family relationships is compromised by geography, the costs associated with prison visits, technology and time differences. Secondly, the article reveals the financial and emotional strain which imprisonment can have on FNPs and their family members. Finally, the article concludes by emphasising the need for a dedicated service that would go some way towards ameliorating the specific issues raised by FNPs, and the families of FNPs, based on their lived experiences.

Introduction

One of the painful features of imprisonment for Foreign National Prisoners (FNPs) is the isolation from family and friends (Adams, 1992). These concerns are not exclusive to FNPs of course, but a substantial body of literature highlights that maintaining contact with families is particularly difficult for FNPs (Barnoux and Wood, 2013; Cheney, 1993; Doyle et al., 2022; Richards et al., 1995), and that separation from family in an unfamiliar environment can mean that foreign nationals’ mental health needs are often greater than they are for other prisoners (Prison Reform Trust, 2004). As Barnoux and Wood (2013) point out, emotional relationships are lost, and experiences of boredom and loneliness are exacerbated. True, there is a growing body of research that focuses on the impact of imprisonment on close family members such as parents, siblings, and partners/spouses (Abass et al., 2016: 258), but ‘a full understanding of the unforeseen and unintended social consequences of imprisonment has not been presented’ (Granja, 2016: 273).

Information on FNPs in Irish prisons is relatively limited (Rogan, 2014), but it has been well documented that foreign nationals are over-represented in the penal system (Pollak, 2022). The available data, as of 30 September 2023, reveals that 681 (652 male and 29 female) of the 4581 persons in custody were FNPs (Irish Prison Service, 2023). This article aims to open up this area of inquiry in an Irish context and examine the importance of familial relationships in the lives of 82 FNPs in Irish prisons. The article begins by outlining the relevant literature before presenting the methodology of this qualitative study. It then develops two key findings that emerged from the qualitative interviews. First, the article shows that the preservation of family relationships is compromised by geography, the costs associated with prison visits, technology and time differences. Secondly, the article reveals the financial and emotional strain which imprisonment can have on FNPs and their family members. Finally, the article concludes by emphasising the need for a dedicated service that would go some way towards ameliorating the specific issues raised by FNPs and the families of FNPs, based on their lived experiences.

Literature review

Scholarship attests that the maintenance of family ties remains essential to the emotional and psychological well-being of FNPs in prison (Adams, 1992; Barnoux and Wood, 2013; HMIP, 2006; Liebling et al., 1999; Sykes, 1958). FNPs, like other prisoners, ‘do not exist in a vacuum’ and ordinarily are ‘members of family, kin and friendship networks’ (Codd, 2018: 1). Although both domestic prisoners and FNPs ‘experience the primary effects of detention and deprivation of liberty, their families live their lives in the shadow of prison’ (Codd, 2018: 1). Prisoners’ families ‘feel the effects of imprisonment most acutely during the sentence’ (Codd, 2018: 1), but ‘family relationships are key to many people who are in prison’ (Doyle et al., 2022: 49). The importance of maintaining communication between prisoners and their families has been recognised by the Council of Europe ¹ and in the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules). Moreover, the Revised European Prison Rules set out, inter alia, that:

special attention shall be paid to the maintenance and development of the relationships of prisoners who are foreign nationals with the outside world, including regular contacts with family and friends, probation and community agencies and volunteers, and, subject to the prisoners’ consent, diplomatic or consular representatives. ²

Principle 19 of the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment of 1998 stipulates that ‘A detained or imprisoned person shall have the right to be visited by and to correspond with, in particular, members of his family and shall be given adequate opportunity to communicate with the outside world, subject to reasonable conditions and restrictions as specified by law or lawful regulations’. Indeed, prison visitation offers temporary relief from this separation and affords incarcerated people the chance to connect directly with family and friends in the prison setting (Doyle et al., 2022). Maintaining familial links is inevitably more problematic for FNPs than national prisoners because their families are frequently living abroad, sometimes in very difficult circumstances, and therefore visits from family members are unlikely (Barnoux and Wood, 2013). Research conducted in England and Wales in 1995 revealed that 32% of male and 16% of female FNPs had not received any visits in the six months preceding the commencement of the study (Richards et al., 1995: 168), while Slade found that only 40% of FNPs in Spain had received visits (Slade, 2015: 22). The contrast with local prisoners who are normally incarcerated in prisons relatively close to their homes brings FNPs’ plight into focus (Brouwer, 2020).

Richards et al. (1995) found that FNPs in England and Wales acknowledged the difficulties family members faced in travelling to a prison. These participants also emphasised the limited duration of the visits (Richards et al., 1995). Notably, prisons in other jurisdictions have permitted prisoners to combine their visit entitlements to optimise in-person family contact. In Sweden and Norway, apartments and rooms are provided for visits inside the prison walls (EuroPris, 2022). Moreover, the facilities in Sweden are prioritised for FNPs who are afforded extra time when family members have travelled from abroad. Likewise, 24-hour long visits in Estonia are extended for prisoners whose family members are living in another country, while in HMP Huntercombe in England, day-long family visits are arranged for the families of foreign prisoners who have travelled a long distance to visit their loved ones (EuroPris, 2022). These initiatives provide some semblance of normality by enabling families to eat together and offering children the opportunity to participate in activities with their parents (EuroPris, 2022). However, such initiatives aimed at maintaining family ties will have minimal impact if the families of FNPs cannot get to the prison in the first place (Barnoux and Wood, 2013).

At the heart of maintaining familial relationships is communication. While phone calls and letters are undoubtedly an important means of maintaining family contact and can potentially contribute to reduced re-offending (May et al., 2008), face-to-face visits are considered to be vital for the preservation of familial bonds between prisoners and their loved ones (Doyle et al., 2022). Principle 19 of the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment of 1998, as stated above, emphasises the importance of prisoners having the right to be visited by family members, but the financial costs of visits were ‘substantial and often drained resources that family members’ could have ‘otherwise used to pay household bills or buy food’ (Comfort et al., 2016: 788). Put simply, the cost of visiting the prison in-person is proving prohibitive for many families of FNPs.

In this context, it is unsurprising that distance from home is widely considered to be one of the greatest barriers to visitation (Young and Turanovic, 2022). Visits from family members – analogous to the experience of FNPs in other jurisdictions are unlikely – except for those from Western European countries (Barnoux and Wood, 2013), with Cochran and others reporting, for example, that for every additional mile a person is confined from home, the likelihood of visitation is reduced by four per cent (Young and Turanovic, 2022). Previous studies have also identified the difficulties that parents of young children face when travelling to prisons (Richards et al., 1995).

COVID-19 exacerbated the challenges faced by all prisoners, including FNPs (Doyle et al., 2022; Garrihy et al., 2023; HMIP, 2021). This was particularly evident with the disruption to face-to-face visitation, which in turn compounded the familial strains that FNPs were already experiencing (Barnoux and Wood, 2013; Cheney, 1993; Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT), 2021; Richards et al., 1995). Virtual visits were thus the ‘easiest form of contact with those abroad’ (Barnoux and Wood, 2013: 243), and the introduction of video calls was a significant development in Irish prisons during the COVID-19 restrictions on in-person visits (IPRT, 2021). However, such initiatives are not immune to other challenges for FNPs, such as diverse time zones. This can result in FNPs’ family members having to organise ‘their life according to prison rhythms and cadences’ as well as the time frames for receiving both video and phone calls from prison (Granja, 2016: 279).

As with many women in prison, foreign national women are often mothers, but they may have children located in other jurisdictions. This adds a further burden and strain on motherhood and ties to their child(ren) as they are generally the primary caregivers before imprisonment (Crewe et al., 2017; Foster, 2012; HMIP, 2021). In addition to visitation, research conducted in England and Wales and the Netherlands identified the challenges encountered by FNPs with respect to accessing telephone calls (Brouwer, 2020; HMIP, 2006, 2016; Richards et al., 1995). In particular, the cost of overseas calls is a continuous challenge for FNPs (Comfort et al., 2016: 788; Prison Reform Trust and Hibiscus Initiatives, 2012; Prisoner Reform Trust and Prisoner Policy Network, 2000; Richards et al., 1995).

A type of ‘secondary prisonization’ (Comfort, 2003) encompasses inter alia not only the ‘impact of a relative's incarceration on the members of their family’, but also ‘includes a loss of rights and resources, as well as the negative psychological and social effects on family members of being a prisoner's relative’ (Reizabal et al., 2023: 16–17). In addition, this change in the family dynamic includes shifts in caretaking roles and financial responsibilities (Boppre et al., 2022) as both ‘kin and kith are subjected to secondary prisonization’ (Comfort, 2003: 101). These sentiments were echoed by Abass et al. (2016: 265) who uncovered ‘evidence of female family members experiencing emotional distress and strain as a consequence of having to adjust to circumstances when male members of the family, on whom they had been dependent, were imprisoned’. In other words, ‘men's incarceration had distinctly shaped their intimate ties’ (Comfort et al., 2016: 788). Similar perspectives were also expressed in Richards et al.'s (1995: 167) study, where one FNP noted that things were ‘really bad’ for their children: ‘no clothes and little money. My daughter works in a nightclub, my son has no work, and the children had to stop school’. These family members effectively became what Comfort (2008: 15) terms ‘quasi inmates’ and ended ‘up serving a ‘parallel sentence’ beyond prison walls’ (Granja 2016: 279).

The European Health Committee has enunciated that ‘[o]ne of the inevitable consequences of imprisonment is the temporary weakening of social contacts’ (Council of Europe, n.d.), while academic research has revealed that the abovementioned financial difficulties can result in strained relationships (Finney Hairston, 2003) as well as creating ‘financial hardships for families, challenges for managing children and problems in marital relations’ (McDonald et al., 2023: 445). Loved ones suffer from stress, emotional hardships, stigmatisation and a deterioration in their mental and physical health when a family member has been imprisoned (Abaass et al., 2016; Comfort et al., 2016; Condry and Scharff Smith, 2018; PACT, 2023).

Furthermore, previous research has discussed the emotional consequences that their imprisonment had on the children of FNPs (Prison Reform Trust, 2004; Richards et al., 1995) and at the extreme end of the spectrum one woman in a study in England and Wales was especially concerned about her daughter who suffered from severe depression (Prison Reform Trust, 2004: 4). Participants in Richards et al.'s (1995) aforementioned study also illustrated the difficulties that their children were experiencing – which included but were not limited to bad behaviour at school, poor school work and illnesses – while it has also been documented that stigmatisation and exclusion can also extend to children who ‘experience stigma, bullying and teasing through school, friends or the wider community following a parent being charged with an offence’ (Partner of Prisoner and Families Support Group, 2010: 15). The children of FNPs have been characterised as the ‘hidden victims’ of incarceration (Wang, 2021).

The established literature on FNPs and family relationships provides illustrative context and support for the findings of this study, as will be elaborated after a brief discussion of the study's methodological approach.

Methodology

This study involved semi-structured interviews, which were carried out in eight Irish prisons with 82 FNPs – 69 male and 13 female. The interviewees were recruited by teachers within the respective institutions, and the interviews were facilitated by the Irish Prison Service (IPS). It is important to acknowledge that the original aim was to recruit participants through information sessions and employ a more meaningful sample selection process. However, the recruitment process had to be adapted to account for the restrictions of COVID-19 and the limited access to the prison environments. Accordingly, teachers in the respective prisons provided FNPs with information pertaining to the research and recruited those who wished to participate.

While the majority of these interviews (63) were conducted in person in English, 13 were carried out via the IPS online calling facilities with the assistance of professional interpreters. This is a secure software which is currently used by inmates for private calls with family members and legal representatives. One key concern was the vulnerability of the interviewees, and these interviews were therefore carried out in line with international best practice and as sensitively as possible (van Liempt and Bilger, 2009; WHO, 2003). The majority of these interviews were conducted in private with the participants in either a classroom, a visitors’ or professional boxes. The only exceptions were six interviewees who – wished to participate but were unable to speak English – were assisted at their request by three prisoners of a shared nationality and/or language who acted as informal interpreters. Language and translation are central to FNPs’ adaptations to prison (Martínez-Gómez, 2014). Prison research invariably presents logistical and methodological challenges (Drake et al., 2015), and the use of peer translators is illustrative. While we appreciate that this raises concerns about the potential misrepresentation of participants’ accounts and sentiments, this was balanced with the merits of allowing participants to ‘tell their story’, which these participants preferred to do rather than attempting to rearrange the interview with a professional translator. We also sought to mitigate the risk of misrepresentation by asking the translator to check in with the participant consistently to reconfirm their understanding of the essence of their assertion. However, we acknowledge this is a limitation of the study.

Prison systems in Europe, almost without exception, have very high proportions of non-national and foreign-born prisoners, and our interviews suggest that Ireland is not an exception in this regard. As stated above, on 30 September 2023, 681 (652 male and 29 female) of the 4581 persons in custody were FNPs (Irish Prison Service, 2023). Of this number, 52.6 per cent were EU nationals, 23 were European citizens, 67 were British nationals, and 62 were African nationals. The remaining nationalities comprised Asian, Central American, Middle Eastern, Oceanian, South American and Caribbean prisoners. Till and others note that ‘broad variations in numbers of detained FNPs are observed between countries occupying traditional Western and Eastern territories’ (Till et al., 2019: 14), and similar findings emerged from this study. The FNPs in this study came from five continents – 24 different countries (see Figure 1), with an age range of 22 to 61 years. 27 participants were still on remand at the time of the interview, with the sentence length for other FNPs ranging from 2 months to a life sentence (minimum 12 years). The duration of the interviews varied between 8 min and 75 min, with an average interview length of 35 min. ³ The interviews were transcribed, stored on institutional servers in encrypted format and analysed thematically (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Ethical approval was granted by the IPS Research Committee and Maynooth University Social Research Ethics Committee.

Figure 1.

Participant origin by continent and gender.

Having set out the methodology, the following sections engage in a thematic discussion of the qualitative findings pertaining to the maintenance of family ties under six key headings: family relationships, prison visits, virtual visits, phone calls, administration issues, and financial strain and family bonds.

Maintaining family ties

Family relationships

Research has identified that the maintenance of family ties is vital to both the psychological and emotional well-being of FNPs in custody (Adams, 1992; Barnoux and Wood, 2013; HMIP, 2006; Liebling et al., 1999; Sykes, 1958). Folk et al. (2019), for instance, revealed a link between pre-release family connectedness and better post-release mental health. It is therefore no surprise that many of the participants in this study spoke of the distress that they were experiencing as a result of, oftentimes, long-term and long-distance separation from loved ones, with several FNPs describing this separation as one of the most painful features of imprisonment. This was particularly captured by a Portuguese participant who expressed the view that ‘the most difficult thing is, I suppose, family … just that you can’t be seeing them and stuff like that. Just family, really, nothing to do with the prison, just my family’ (P25). Similar sentiments were also expressed by an African participant who observed that ‘I’m so far from my family. That's the most difficult thing for me’ (P22), while a Polish FNP stated, ‘I don’t see my wife and kids in six months, seven months almost. So, it's very hard for me’ (P29). Separation from loved ones is further exacerbated for our participants by the fact that they receive few visits due to the distance and high costs associated with travel, which corresponds with the literature on FNPs in other jurisdictions (Brouwer, 2020; Christian, 2005; Croux et al., 2018; HMIP, 2006; Richards et al., 1995). The impact of the absence of face-to-face visits on these FNPs cannot be underestimated, especially when one considers that family contact during imprisonment is reported to reduce the likelihood that an offender will reoffend post-release (Barrick et al., 2014; Duwe and Clark, 2013).

Prison visits

Contact with family is inevitably ‘restricted and mediated by the prison’ (HMIP, 2016: 3). However, efforts to maintain family bonds are often challenging for FNPs to a greater extent than national prisoners because their families may frequently live in other jurisdictions (Barnoux and Wood, 2013). This was reflected in this research as the majority of the FNPs reported that their family members were not residing in Ireland. One Brazilian FNP alluded to this phenomenon: ‘the Irish have a family here and we … does not have family here, so it's impossible’ (P75). This was also summarised succinctly by one professional stakeholder interviewee in a recent Irish study conducted by two of the authors and others, who noted that FNPs:

… face all of the same challenges that white nationals face when incarcerated, plus a lot of others that domestic nationals in prison don’t face. It seems that the difficulties that they face, often stem from being very much alone in the Irish system, peculiarly alone, because very often, they are people from another country, who, if they are fortunate enough to have any family or friend network of support on the outside, it is usually limited (Doyle et al., 2022: 48).

One substantial challenge to visitation identified in this study was the financial implications of travelling to Ireland for face-to-face visits. ⁴ Two of these prisoners, for instance, pointed out that the cost of travel is ‘very expensive’ (P75; P76), while a Romanian prisoner noted that ‘the finance is a problem because it costs to come over to Ireland. It also costs to get the hotel to stay and to go back home as well’ (P8). This participant also pointed to the visitation obstacles that the families of FNPs face in comparison to the families of Irish prisoners. He observed that ‘because for Irish people, they are here, they are local, so they just have [to] get in the car and drive. But for the foreign people, we need to organise the flights and hotel a place to stay, so this is the problem’ (P8). These findings mirror previous research in other jurisdictions, which also identified the costly nature of visiting loved ones in prison abroad (Barnoux and Wood, 2013; Corston, 2007; Richards et al., 1995).

In addition to cost, other overlapping challenges include distance and duration inter alia, while the substantial cost of travel was compounded by the ‘short time’ (P79) permitted for visitation. One European participant noted that he could not see the point of his daughter spending ‘thousands of money to come over there only to stay 15 min … where's the point to travel and spend money for accommodation, flight for only 15 min? It's not reasonable’ (P40). Likewise, a Romanian prisoner asserted that ‘my family is abroad now like. If they come over to the country … who is going to come over to visit for 15/20 min visit? … What's the point of coming all the way over from Romania?’ (P31). Other participants came to the same conclusion. One English prisoner – despite the geographical proximity of England to Ireland – stated that they told their family not to bother visiting because ‘it's money, for a 20 min/half hour visit … by the time we got the flights, hire a car, hotel for the night, some food, you’re talking 500 quid. And that's doing it on the cheap’ (P49). As a result, one Polish participant expressed the view that these challenges ‘ruins the families. Especially for people who have long distance’ (P45). Put otherwise, the families of these participants experienced elements of what Comfort (2003) terms ‘secondary prisonization’.

Previous studies have identified the difficulties that parents of young children face when travelling to prisons (Richards et al., 1995), and this too was borne out, particularly by the female participants in this study (for more details, see Cleary et al., 2025). While not an exclusive challenge for FNPs, family visits for women in prison in Ireland are difficult due to the disparate geographical location of Ireland's two female prisons (IPRT, 2023). One Brazilian woman outlined the challenges that this presented for her husband and son to visit: ‘they travel one and a half hour … my husband work, he need to look after my son, so it's a little bit difficult. It's very expensive, but every second week they try and come visit me’ (P55).

Analogously, many prisoners stated that they too would benefit from longer visits, preferably ‘more than one day’ (P76). One Polish prisoner, for instance, observed that ‘coming from abroad, we should be allowed to get like 2/3 visits in three days in the row … or even extended two hour visit in the room that we can spend with our families, that we can chat … makes us strong in jail’ (P50). Significantly, the IPS have been reported to be quite accommodating and flexible in this regard (Doyle et al., 2022: 48). In this respect, an African prisoner noted that because their family are ‘coming from a long distance, I get you know extra time. Only … because I’m not an Irish prisoner’ (P22). This level of flexibility was also acknowledged and appreciated by another participant:

I know on one occasion, I think they made a mistake. I think my brother made the mistake with either the date or something happened, or they were late or something happened. And because they knew they were travelling, they actually arranged for them to be let in and gave me one of the free slots (P11).

Nonetheless, despite ad hoc local arrangements for longer visits for the families of FNPs in various Irish prisons, nothing resembles the previously discussed policies and practices in other jurisdictions, such as in Sweden, Norway, Estonia and HMP Huntercombe in England, where prisoners are permitted to combine their visit entitlements in order to optimise in-person family contact for 24-hour periods, and longer, in family-friendly accommodations (EuroPris, 2022). As emphasised in Principle 19 of the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment of 1998, prisoners retain the right of visitation by family members, but, for many of the families of FNPs – even those who resided in Ireland – the cost proves prohibitive. This is due to the fact that many of these prisoners come from ‘backgrounds with systematic patterns of pre-existing disadvantage’ (Condry et al., 2016: 623).

Mirroring research in England and Wales which highlighted that Covid-19 safety precautions during visitation proved unpopular among prisoners (HMIP, 2021), participants in this study expressed their frustration as ‘everything is done through plastic window … it's hard to get any kind of contact’ (P52) and ‘you can barely hear … you can’t hear’ (P24). The effect of the restrictions on interpersonal contact was also explicitly highlighted by a Romanian FNP:

I have six children … when coming to visit, we cannot keep our children on our laps … it's very hard … no kiss allowed because of screen, masks. It's hard life, it's very very hard … every time he wants to jump at the window, he cried (P41).

Reflecting the challenges faced by prisoners internationally (Families Outside, 2021a, 2021b; HMIP, 2021), a Brazilian woman in this study expressed her distress at having to choose which of her children was to be permitted to visit and the lack of physical contact allowed:

my daughter just last weekend first visit after one year because the Covid. We can’t hug and only one … I can choose one [child] to visit me. And this is very hard because we went to see but no (P76).

Consequently, some participants resigned themselves to videocalls rather than in-person visits due to these restrictions. The following participants identify the compromises that form the deliberations on whether families make in-person visits or not. One Lithuanian participant asserted that ‘visits not worth it, it's better to see them through the computer screen. It's the same thing. You cannot touch, you cannot hug … what's the point?’ (P59). Likewise, a Romanian prisoner observed that he told his family ‘they were better off, don’t come at all, just make video call’ (P31). Initiatives such as ‘video visitation’ thus not only helped to eliminate many of the challenges that in-person visitation presented during the public health crisis, but they also helped foreign nationals to ‘reduce their sense of isolation and emotional well-being’ (Barnoux and Wood, 2013: 243; Wang, 2021).

Virtual visits

Some of these challenges were exacerbated for this cohort throughout the pandemic; others may have been alleviated (Brandon and Dingwall, 2022). One solution to the abovementioned challenges was the roll-out of virtual visits during the global public health crisis, which provided FNPs with a technological ‘way of ‘seeing’ their family’ (Slade, 2015: 23), once a week’ (P24, P25, P29). Research has highlighted the benefits of virtual visits, which include both a reduction in the travel time experienced by visitors (Boudin et al., 2014) and in the time spent waiting for the visit to begin (Grohs, 2013). Video calls received the approval of FNPs in previous research (Brandon and Dingwall, 2022; Slade, 2015), and similar findings emanated from this study, with a number of participants reporting that the introduction of video calls alleviated some of the burden placed on family members by eliminating the need for them to travel long distances to the prison for a short visit. Additionally, the convenience of virtual visits for contacting those abroad was noted, with one Brazilian interviewee pointing to the increased contact that he now enjoys with family members:

we have a video call now instead of the face-to-face visit, so it's actually easier because at the start of the sentence, I would only see them once or twice, but now I can see them every week if you want on a video call (P11).

Similarly, one English participant stated that it is ‘nice. Because I can see the other person, especially my girlfriend, because she's 2000 miles away. It's very easy’ (P50). FNPs in previous Irish research expressed the view that video calls were valuable for those in different time zones, or those who lived abroad (Brandon and Dingwall, 2022), and the importance of video calls in maintaining contact with family members while in custody was emphasised by a number of the participants in this study. In this regard, one Nigerian prisoner stated that ‘When I speak with my family, it makes a difference, you know? They should give us opportunities to have contact with our family more. So, when I do that, it helps’ (P27). Notably, this innovation was implemented relatively swiftly due to the international health restrictions (Office of the Inspector of Prisons et al., 2020). Such expediency in implementing progressive measures to ameliorate the conditions for FNPs in Irish prisons is certainly welcome, but it should be noted that it became apparent during the interviews that, despite such positive sentiments, a number of the FNPs still retained their desire to have face-to-face visits with their loved ones. As Wang (2021) put it, video calls fail to replicate the ‘psychological experience of – and therefore benefits – of in-person visitation, and should never be used as a replacement’.

Although the provision of video calls has generally been a very welcome initiative and has the ‘potential to improve quality of life for incarcerated people and help correctional administrators run safer and more humane facilities’ (Wang, 2021), poor internet connections hindered the maintenance of family contact for certain FNPs in this study. The range and extent of difficulties faced while engaging in virtual visits are captured by the following testimonies of our participants. One Brazilian FNP asserted that ‘the internet is very bad’ (P75), while another Brazilian participant pointed out that with ‘video calls, they’re hard to get through. You know, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t work’ (P24). Similar sentiments were evident in a recent Irish study (Doyle et al., 2022), and in addition to technical issues, other interviewees noted that for video calls, they ‘have a difficulty because of the time difference’ (P75). Family members, therefore, have to organise their lives to align with prison schedules within the timeframes for receiving both video and phone calls from prison, corresponding with the experiences of prisoners’ relatives in Granja's Portuguese study (2016). One African participant stated this is difficult because ‘you have some certain days and the time they give you the video call, maybe they are sleeping. So, it was kind of tricky. It is very hard for you to get video calls and stuff’ (P37). Likewise, a Lithuanian participant stated that ‘sometimes when I have a video call with my sister, she calls my parents on WhatsApp … so, kind of do it that way. Because there's [time] difference so to do a call directly with them is kind of difficult’ (P46). Consequently, one woman highlighted that this meant that ‘the family never get to make video calls’ (P75) effectively because prisoner and family respectively ‘dwell in the juxtaposition of two ostensibly separate worlds’ (Comfort, 2008: 15). It is for these reasons inter alia that video visitation should be supplemental, and never be implemented or expanded at the expense of in-person visitation (Lee, 2019; Wang, 2021).

Administrative issues

In 2021, Wang pointed out that ‘[t]o incarcerated people and their families, it's glaringly obvious that staying in touch by any means necessary — primarily through visits, phone calls, and mail — is tremendously important and beneficial to everyone involved’ (Wang, 2021). However, she also added the caveat that ‘prisons and jails are notorious for making communication difficult or impossible’ (Wang, 2021), and this was borne out by the family members of a number of the participants in this study who experienced difficulties contacting the respective prison authorities to organise both face-to-face and virtual visits. The was captured, in particular, by a prisoner who noted:

when my family they call prison, they no get appointment quick for visit me … when my brother or family call, no one pick up the phone. They don’t get appointment to visit me and if they send email, no one answered them. That's why I no get visits (P78).

In 2022, the then Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, in response to a parliamentary question, said that ‘maintaining contact with family and friends while in custody plays an important role in the rehabilitation of prisoners’ (McDonagh, 2022), but one particular issue emphasised was the difficulty which family members encountered when contacting the prison by phone. Indeed, several participants asserted that ‘nobody answers the phones’ (P76), ‘no one answered’ (P78), and there was ‘no answer’ (P57). True, these lapses in administration are not reserved for FNPs, but it is plausible to argue that impact of an unanswered phone, and the potential loss of that visit, is more negative in outcome for FNPs, especially where family members are travelling from another jurisdiction.

Critics have argued that ‘video calls and emerging technologies are all too often used as an expensive (and inferior) replacement for in-person visits’ (Wang, 2021), but similar issues were reported by participants when family members endeavoured to contact respective prisons to organise video calls. One Romanian participant revealed that ‘sometimes they [family members] could be ringing 25 times to 50 times before someone even answers the phone … I’ve heard a lot of other prisoners giving out about the same thing’ (P25), while a Polish FNP highlighted how staff in this particular prison were aware of the issue:

it took my family about a month to get a visit because they were keep ringing and keep ringing and nobody was answering the phone and the jail was saying ‘yeah you have to keep ringing’ and that's the way we have over here … Eventually they got through (P50).

It seems difficult to comprehend why ‘prison logistics’ could not be ‘modified to allow for a more regular and predictable schedule for communicating with loved ones, with dedicated telephone lines available to those seeking information’, but these ‘administrative burdens’ were not reserved to phone and video calls (McDonald et al., 2023, pp. 445–7). Similar difficulties were experienced by family members when contacting the prison via email, because, as one prisoner put it, ‘nobody answers the mails’ (P76). One Romanian participant, for example, stated, ‘my wife send about 15, 17 emails, she never got anything back. I asked the chief, he said they are going to sort it out, but nothing happened like’ (P30). Other ‘bureaucratic inefficiencies’ reported related to the submission of forms and receipt of links for video calls (P47; see also McDonald et al., 2023: 446). One FNP asserted that ‘I submitted the form, but nothing happened. I couldn’t get the video call’ (P39), while another interviewee revealed that ‘I fill about 10 sheets … I need a video call, I can’t see my family’ (P30). It is unclear whether such ‘bureaucratic nuisances were evidence of callous indifference or purposeful maleficence on behalf of authorities who … saw incarcerated individuals and their loved ones as underserving’ or a deliberate attempt to ‘increase the burdens of individuals and groups that officials see as stigmatized, tainted or undeserving’, but there is little doubt that such onerous administrative measures or nuisances undermined the rights of a significant subset of the participants in this study (McDonald et al., 2023: 456). Moreover, as previously mentioned, these bureaucratic failures negatively impact all prisoners but are arguably exacerbated for some FNPs, where visits are often less frequent and when international travel is involved. Regrettably, this culminated in long waiting times for visitation with FNPs reporting that they had to ‘ask and ask’ (P76) and indeed certain participants were ‘still wait[ing] for answer from prison’ at the time of interview (P57). This was captured by two participants who stated respectively that ‘after six months I get one visit’ (P78) and that they ‘haven’t heard back for five months’ (P30). The consequences of these administrative frustrations were also expressed by a Nigerian interviewee who asserted that ‘family is playing a huge part in every foreign national life. So, if you can’t get to come engage with your family while you are in prison, it's very bad’ (P27).

Phone calls

The participants in this study stated that they are allowed to make phone calls which last 6 minutes. Yet while certain FNPs stated that if you are on a standard regime ‘you get six minutes once a day’ (P42), other participants highlighted that they were on the enhanced regime because they worked or attended the school and therefore, they were allowed to have two phone calls a day. Nevertheless, many participants reported an issue with the length of the phone calls, with a number of FNPs stating ‘why just give six minutes?’ (P19) and ‘it's not enough’ (P81). This was pointed out by a Romanian FNP who highlighted that this was problematic as ‘you can’t even make a conversation … trying to speak to the kids’ (P31), while an African participant communicated that the phone calls were often shorter than 6 minutes: ‘they’re meant to give us six minutes. And I always look at the phone calls, it's never been six minutes … what you get is two or three minutes’ (P23). More specifically to FNPs, one Chinese participant highlighted the issues with the short call time for long-distance calls:

in closed prison, you get six minutes once a day … not good … especially for long distance calls to China. It can be hard to connect. Especially with my Mam as she is old and she is not very fast to react sometimes … once the phone call is gone, you waste the phone call (P42).

Similar concerns relating to the cost of phone calls were identified in the previously discussed literature (Comfort et al., 2016; Prison Reform Trust and Hibiscus Initiatives, 2012; Prisoner Reform Trust and Prisoner Policy Network, 2000), but concerns expressed by FNPs with respect to the phone scheme in place in Ireland's open prisons were a distinctive feature of this study. One Asian FNP succinctly explained this scheme: ‘in the closed prison, you have to use the prison phone. But here, thank God, I can use my mobile. It's not a smartphone, it's a Nokia’ (P42). Analogously, an Italian prisoner added that ‘it's just call and text … I have to buy it from the prison shop … it's €65 in total with €15 credit’ (P47). However, while some participants described this scheme as ‘way better’ as they can call family members ‘anytime I want’ (P42), several FNPs reported experiencing difficulties contacting their family members due to the cost of making international calls on their mobile phones. Other participants alluded to the difficulty of not having a free prison phone because, as one Brazilian FNP put it, ‘how can I top up my phone every week to ring my family? … sometimes I have no money, I have no credit’ (P47). Similarly, another Polish prisoner illustrated why this was especially challenging for FNPs: ‘for internationally it costs you 35 cents for a minute. And I have to top up at least €30 per week … if she live here, the phone calls for free with the network’ (P44). These findings point to demonstrably negative outcomes for FNPs and are reminiscent of those that emerged from two older English studies, which emphasised the difficulties of cost (HMIP, 2016; Richards et al., 1995). Indeed, even those in ‘closed’ prisons were apprehensive about being transferred to open prisons due to the phone scheme and the difficulties that existed in relation to making international calls:

international for Brazil … difficult for me. For now it's, okay. I think about when I go to open prison. Give you a small phone, normal phone … for me calling Brazil I can’t because you need to use credit … but I can’t buy credit for me to ring Brazil every day (P57).

Similar issues emanated from more recent research conducted in England and Wales and the Netherlands, where FNPs – who were entirely reliant on phone calls due to the geographical distance between them and their families – noted that international phone calls are extremely expensive (Brouwer, 2020; HMIP, 2016).

Financial strain and family bonds

A substantial number of participants reported that their families had lost a source of income as a result of their imprisonment. Understandably, and for many, this practicality superseded the desire for more family contact in these circumstances. The financial strain caused by the removal of a family member to prison was poignantly captured by a Polish participant who explained that ‘my parents and her parents help her [his wife] to survive’ (P29). McDonald and others have pointed out how penal power impacts the financial lives and economic opportunities of adults and children with an incarcerated loved one (McDonald et al., 2023), and a number of FNPs in this study emphasised how this financial strain affected the lives of their family members. This appeared to particularly affect female family members who faced ‘additional or changing roles in the domestic setting’ which frequently involved them ‘becoming the breadwinner or main source of income’ (Abass et al., 2016: 264). One Polish participant outlined that ‘my wife now have to work much more and it's very hard to her now to pay bills, rent house. And my daughters stop studying too because they have to work as well’ (P26), while a Middle Eastern interviewee revealed that their spouse now relies on social welfare payments and support from the Government since their imprisonment (P7). The feelings of helplessness caused by this shift in caretaking roles and financial responsibilities were particularly emphasised by a Portuguese FNP who stated that ‘I was living with the mother, so I was paying rent to her, and I was also paying the girlfriend maintenance for the kids. So, I suppose they’ve lost out on that and there's not really much I can do when I’m in here’ (P25). The detrimental financial impact on the families of prisoners, and how this in turn affects the prisoner themselves, was also captured by a Romanian prisoner:

I was support them when I was outside obviously but when I am in prison, I couldn’t help them any longer, you know. And I think that it the worst thing with the imprisonment for me anyway (P2).

As Maruna (2016) put it, ‘[i]t is impossible to isolate punishment as practiced in most societies to a single individual, when we are all connected in families, communities and societies’ (100).

The weakening of social ties, even if temporary, is highlighted by the European Health Committee (Council of Europe, n.d.) and was reflected in the contributions of many participants. As one Lithuanian FNP put it, imprisonment ‘ruins the families. Especially for people who have long distance’ (P45). This was also captured poignantly by one Nigerian FNP who highlighted that ‘every day is more weaker, you know?’ (P47). Moreover, one Portuguese FNP stated, ‘even my relationships up in the air … people lose faith in you. They’re like ‘are you gonna change as a person? … is this who you’re gonna be for the rest of your life?’ (P25). Similarly, another FNP clearly expressed the detrimental impact that their imprisonment had on their family:

… my wife is having it hard, you know, coping with the kids … Most of the time, you know, we shout, cry on the phone. She has been going through to see counselling … most of the time I do all the activities with the kids, but now she can’t do it because … it's too much for her … it's really affected my family (P27).

Previous research has discussed the emotional consequences that imprisonment had on the children of FNPs (Prison Reform Trust, 2004; Richards et al., 1995). Significantly, while recent research conducted on female FNPs indicates that they were more likely to hide their imprisonment from their children (Cleary et al., 2025), the male FNPs interviewed for this study expressed similar struggles and emotions to those noted above. A Romanian prisoner explained that his children are ‘crying every time. Their hearts are broken, and I am not there. They don’t get visits … I don’t get much access to them’. He also noted that his eight-year-old child told him ‘“I’m kind of upset on you … because you left us alone” … that breaks my heart like’ (P30). These were not the only participants who observed that their children were the ‘hidden victims’ of incarceration (Wang, 2021). A European prisoner, for example, stated that he had ‘to cover up and pretend I was okay just to not make [my daughter] feel worse’ (P40), while another FNP stated ‘it's hard, you know? Sometimes I ring my kids and they say ‘I miss you, when are you come back to hug me? When you come back to bring me to school?’ … That's crazy’ (P47). Conversely, a number of participants observed that their familial relationships had become stronger since their imprisonment. This positive development was outlined concisely by a Brazilian participant:

before everything happened, our communication wasn’t the best. But then when, when everything happened … our bond got stronger, and our … communication got a lot better. We’re there for each other more (P24).

Likewise, one Portuguese prisoner observed that ‘[i]t brought me closer to everyone in the sense of, I suppose, they’re a bit more worried about me now, do you get me?’ (P25). Families, after all, are a prisoner's ‘link to the outside world’ (Condry, 2007: 4) and critically the preservation and strengthening of such ‘family ties’ has important implications for the successful resettlement of these prisoners (Barnoux and Wood, 2013; Council of Europe, n.d.; Richards et al., 1995; Slade, 2015) and ‘may be an important way to limit recidivism’ (Brunton-Smith and McCarthy, 2017: 463).

Conclusion

The need for connectedness and a sense of belonging is a fundamental human motivation across ages, contexts, and cultures (Bronson, 2008; Sentse et al., 2019). Indeed, human contact is so vital that when one is deprived of it for long periods of time, it may cause mental health problems and lead to difficulty managing even the basics of daily life (Kamoyo et al., 2015). This is exacerbated for prisoners not only because of their confinement, but also due the removal of their social networks − particularly family members − which results in lost emotional relationships, boredom, and loneliness. The creation and maintenance of interpersonal relationships are a vital part of life in prison (Leibling, 2011), and this article demonstrates that this is particularly the case for this cohort of FNPs who, for the most part, are imprisoned in a different country to where their family and support networks reside. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted with 82 FNPs, the article reveals that the experience of being imprisoned in a separate jurisdiction from one's family presents specific deprivations and that the financial burdens of visiting a family member imprisoned abroad are insurmountable for the families of many of the FNPs in the Irish prison system.

While there have been positive developments with respect to facilitating contact between FNPs and their family and friends while in custody – most notably extended and accumulated family visits for those travelling long distances, the continued provision of video visitation, and the proposed installation of ‘in-cell telephony’ across the country's 12 detention facilities (McDonagh, 2022) – a long-term systematic structure is required to effectively support this marginalised and ‘forgotten’ socio-economic group. Accordingly, this article concludes by recommending three feasible and implementable recommendations that would assist FNPs in Irish prisons in maintaining their family relationships. First, the IPS should formalise a policy across the prison estate regarding extended and accumulated family visits for those travelling long distances and communicate this effectively to FNPs. Secondly, the IPS should support the establishment of a dedicated service − similar to that provided to Irish prisoners abroad by the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas (ICPO) − to address the needs of FNPs and the families of FNPs imprisoned in Ireland. Structured and consistent systems of communication and support are required to vindicate the rights of FNPs. A simple example of the support such a service could offer is the provision of a liaison who could establish clear and positive channels of communication between the individual FNP, consular staff, community groups and/or non-profit organisations (NGOs). Significantly, the majority of the participants reported that they received no information and/or substantive assistance from consular staff when requested, and that they, or their families, had not received support from any charities or NGOs. These issues are, in many cases, easily addressed with reasonable resources, but only if there is the political will to do so.

Moreover, the families of these FNPs encountered difficulties communicating with respective prisons and negotiating basic administrative processes such as organising a visit or a video call. In this context, the pressing need for this type of external service that could liaise with the respective prisons was captured by a number of participants. As one African prisoner put it, ‘I’d like to see key workers come to jail and ask you for your problem and help you with things, you know? And help you with anything that you have to do’ (P23). Similarly, another African participant observed that FNPs would welcome this type of assistance:

if the Irish prison can try and get some other bodies, like organisation outside, to come here and try and talk to the foreigners. Because some of us are scared to talk about our problems … but it's not scary when someone outside comes in and talks to you (P37).

However, the proposed service should not be oriented solely to prisoners. Rather, such a service must encompass targeted supports for FNP families − similar to those provided by Prisoners Abroad, Bureau Buitenland and the ICPO − to assist with the organisation of visits, provide information on regulations and requirements, and help navigate the administrative burdens that FNP families presently encounter with the prison system in Ireland.

Finally, many of the lessons learned from this study are both adaptable and transferable to other areas of the criminal justice sector, including probation officers who work with FNPs in the prison system and in the community. Recent research from Italy, for instance, revealed that that the rights of foreign nationals on probation – who face a ‘kind of double stigma, as both offenders and foreigners’ – were not vindicated in practice (Ravagnani and Romano, 2024: 60). These findings resonate with the experiences of the participants of this study and serve as a timely reminder of the importance of highlighting both the needs and experiences of this cohort in order to reflect on, and enhance, the support provided (Ravagnani and Romano, 2024). FNPs must be able to access the services of probation agencies, especially in relation to community supervision and resettlement, ⁵ and state authorities must take positive action to respond to the ‘specific problems that foreign persons may face while subject to community sanctions or measures, in prison, during transfer and after release’. ⁶ Furthermore, state authorities should review pre- and post-release services to ensure that they meet the needs of, and are accessible to, FNPs (Doyle et al., 2022). One of the key findings of this study is the importance of positive interactions in the lives of 82 FNPs in Irish prisons, which, by implication, reinforces the need for probation officers to build trust and constructive relationships with this particularly marginalised cohort. Building and sustaining relationships between probation officers and FNPs is a crucial step in assisting these prisoners move away from crime (Burnett and McNeill, 2005; Healy, 2014; Phillips, 2013), but equally important is the preservation of family and ‘social ties that can aid in the transition back to society after release’ (Lee, 2019: 432). The important role of family ties in desistance – as a protective or risk factor – is relevant for probation workers and is intrinsically linked to the findings that emanated from this study (Nugent and Schinkel, 2016). Families, after all, are a prisoner's ‘link to the outside world’ (Condry, 2007: 4) and the preservation and strengthening of such ‘family ties’ is critical for the successful resettlement of these prisoners (Barnoux and Wood, 2013; Richards et al., 1995; Slade, 2015; Council of Europe, n.d.) and ‘may be an important way to limit recidivism’ (Brunton-Smith and McCarthy, 2017: 463) among this cohort in the future.